By Aaron Klein: World Boxing Organization welterweight champion Paul Williams (35-1, 26 KOs), as most everyone expected he would, he destroyed middleweight Andy Kolle (17-2, 12 KOs) in the 1st round tonight at the Soboba Casino, in San Jacinto, California. In a rare match-up between two southpaws, Williams, 27, went right after Kolle in the first round, tagging him with a brief flurry of shots and hurting him, and then finishing him off with a couple of rights to the body and head, and then a left hook to the head as Kolle was on his downward descent towards the canvas. Kolle, 27, gamely tried to make it to his feet in a brave effort to continue fighting, but the referee Jerry Cantu was having none of it and quickly stopped the fight at 1:37 of the 1st round, only 97 seconds into the round.
Williams hurt Kolle in the opening seconds of the bout with a straight left hand. The action then slowed somewhat as Williams, looking a lot bigger and slightly smooth as if he didn’t all muscle while building up to the middleweight division, missed shots and took a few light punches from Kolle.
However, before long Williams connected again with another big left hand, hurting Kolle for the second time in the round. Kolle then backed up to the ropes where he was tagged with several shots from Williams, sending Kolle down on his back, his head hitting the bottom ropes as he fell. He laid there for a long time, and then seemed to come to, getting up quickly but staggering as he did so. After seeing Kolle stagger and almost fall as he was trying to get up, the referee waived off the one-sided fight. Although this was a good win, let’s be real about this, Kolle didn’t offer up any competition and probably didn’t belong in the same ring with Williams.
For Williams, who was moving up from the welterweight division to the middleweight level, it was a spectacular punching performance, showing that he may be a force in the division should he continue to fight there. Afterwards, Williams had this to say, “When I get in my rhythm nothing’s going to stop me.”
With his size, 6’2″, long 82″ reach and high volume work rate, Williams would almost immediately be a very dangerous foe for WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik, the fighter that most boxing experts feel is the best middleweight in the division. Right now, short of a knockout win by Pavlik, I’d pick Williams to beat him quite easily.
Pavlik doesn’t have half the work rate that Williams possess nor does he have as good a chin as him either. It would come down to Pavlik either getting lucky and knocking Williams out, or else getting out-worked by Williams and losing the fight by a decision.
Aside from Pavlik, Williams also has Antonio Margarito, the newly crowned WBA welterweight champion, as a potential foe. However, Margarito, who defeated Miguel Cotto recently in a 11th round stoppage in July, hasn’t shown any interested in wanting to fight Williams despite losing a close 12-round decision to him in July 2007. I think if Williams keeps on winning like this, Margarito will eventually have no other choice but to fight him because of public pressure from boxing fans and writers alike.
Apart from Margarito, there’s also Miguel Cotto who would make for a good opponent for Williams. However, after his terrible knockout loss to Margarito, in which Cotto twice took a knee to avoid further punishment, it would seem remote that he would want to risk suffering another beating. Indeed, Williams is like a younger, more improved version of Margarito, who can do everything that he can do only much better. A fight with Cotto would be a huge mega-fight, even though Cotto is somewhat tarnished for having lost to Margarito.
Perhaps the best of all possible opponent for Williams, Floyd Mayweather Jr., probably won’t show any interest in fighting him, probably not wanting to have to face the tough prospects of mixing it up with a fighter Williams’ size and with his incredible work rate. At this point, Williams perhaps is the best fighter from the welterweight division to the super middleweights class, and possibly even better than any of the light heavyweights as well. There’s really no one out there that can compete with him right now.
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